


A Seal Over Your Heart

by I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own



Series: Malec One Shots [28]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Oooooooooppppppppss, soulmate mark au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 22:02:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19473091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own/pseuds/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own
Summary: Everyone has a Soulmate Mark over their heart. The mark is the first words their Soulmate will ever speak to them.





	A Seal Over Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I changed up their first meeting a bit, it still happens like in the show but it's their second meeting, because I just couldn't bloody work with 'Well done', couldn't do it!!! 
> 
> I'm sick, so have whatever this is!!
> 
> Oh, the mark is only visible to the person wearing it.

Magnus is fifty-one when he gives up on the idea of Soulmates, there’s a mark vibrant and wonderful over his heart, but he’s stopped caring if he ever hears those words. He has all of time stretched out before him, is he truly expected to wait? And it’s not like he won’t hear the words said a thousand different ways by a thousand different people over the years, probably hear them said exactly this way and he’s supposed to know who, specifically, they belong to? Ridiculous.

_Are you a warlock?_

If his soulmate is out there, they will have to find him because he is done searching, done waiting. He has a future stretching unendingly out in front of him, and he’s not going to waste it waiting on some mythical person to fall into his lap.

* * *

Of course, as he expects, he hears the words said more times than he can count through the years in some variation or another, but he also hears them said exactly as they’re written across his heart and no matter what he’s actually promised himself, he sleeps with all of them, eventually. When eventually he realizes it’s unhealthy and that he really, truly is still actually searching for this person, he stops.

Then he meets _her_ ; Andromeda of the Temple of Aphrodite. A warlock from the old world, who has spent the last few centuries studying the phenomena that is the Seelie Realm.

“Are you a warlock?” she queries, sliding up beside him at the pub, where he’s taken to drinking away his woes. He laughs at the question, downs his drink and hums.

“Yes, I am.” He replies, waving for a refill, but deliberately not turning to her.

“Oh, that’s funny. Those are my words.” She says, and it takes him a moment to figure out what she’s meaning, before he nearly chokes and finally turns to look at her, his heart immediately constricting in his chest.

“Yours were mine, too.” He admits, figures there’s no harm in it. Their words are so vague, there’s really no guarantee they’re soulmates. He lets her talk him into going to bed with her that night anyway. Then he lets her talk him into staying with her for breakfast, and he lets her talk him into joining her in the town for the day, and then, and then, and then…

She doesn’t believe in marriage, claims it is a wonderful institution, but not one she’ll ever agree to a part in. He realizes she doesn’t care for the legalities, the ridiculous notion that were they to marry, he would own her. She who is his elder by centuries, she who could destroy him in a second, she who means the whole world to him. They never marry, but in the privacy of the home they build together, they swear oaths to each other, devote themselves to the future they are creating.

He loves her like burning and she laughs when he tries to tell her this. She loves him like they’re the only two people left in the world, the only two people who matter. In the privacy of their own minds, they wonder, secretly, if they are soulmates. But they never speak the thoughts out loud, never give them voice. He loves her, she loves him. That is all that matters.

Until one day, he returns home to find her in the field, surrounded by the bodies of a dozen or so Shadowhunters, he glances once at them before his attention is firmly, totally on her. Kneeling down in the dirt to pull her bloodied form into his arms.

“It’s not safe.” She tells him, her voice broken and quiet, barely audible in the breeze that blows around them. “You must go.”

“Not without you. I won’t. Never without you.” He promises, even though he knows in his heart and in his mind that she will not survive this. Can already feel his magic giving her up for dead.

“I love you, Magnus Bane.” She tells him like it’s the most important thing in the world, and then she’s gone. The light of his life snuffed out and his entire world gone in the blink of an eye.

He buries her in their garden, surrounded by the plants she loved so much. He keeps a lock of her hair, to remember her by, then he portals away, somewhere, anywhere better than there and it’s not until he’s standing, staring down into the churning water below him that he realizes where he is, what he’s doing and he doesn’t care.

“Are you really going to jump?” a voice calls from beside him, and he almost falls over the edge in his fright.

“Maybe.” He replies, never taking his eyes from the water below.

“Come on, you can come back to mine and tell me all about your woes.” She coaxes, he considers her words, considers the water below him, considers the life he left behind, that he’ll never get back and he sighs. He’s been here before, never pushed quite this far, but love and death go hand in hand, this is a lesson he learnt long ago but Andromeda was… different.

“Yes, alright.” He says and lets himself be pulled away.

* * *

Camille was a _betrayal_ he hadn’t needed, so soon after Andromeda but she was also an _lesson_ he needed. The kick he needed to get his life back in order. Without Camille, he wouldn’t have fled to America, wouldn’t have met George. Of course, George broke his heart, too, but George never had control over that, so Magnus was the only fool in the room when it came to the two of them. He hadn’t meant to love George, George was just… the opposite to everything Andromeda had been, George didn’t even know he was a warlock, not until it was too hard to explain why he wasn’t aging, and he’d finally had to admit the truth. George wanted a family though, he fought in the war, he survived it, and he wanted to have a family who could grow up free in the country he fought for.

Of course, Magnus later thinks George would question what good he really did, and Magnus wouldn’t blame him, though he knows exactly the good George and those like him did for their country. America has never let go of its racist past and Magnus questions whether it ever will, but it’s not like the so-called Land of the Free, Home of the Brave is the only hypocrite out there.

Magnus had let George go without regret, had even played uncle to the man’s kids for a few years, before he had to start using glamours whenever he visited. It was losing George that was the last straw for him. George wasn’t his soulmate; their words didn’t match. George had met his soulmate in the war and watched him die, Magnus had admitted to the same. He thinks maybe they clung to each other because of it. At least he got to watch George live a happy and fulfilling life, before the end.

* * *

After losing George, Magnus’ heart shut down and he couldn’t figure out how to open it back up again. Ragnor and Cat circled around him like worried hens for the first few months he settled in New York, before Ragnor decided Magnus just needed time and returned home to London. Cat, on the other hand, settled herself down in the city and refused to budge.

Then along came Raphael, and Magnus didn’t have time to think about anyone or anything else in his life but the fourteen-year-old vampire whose entire world had changed in the span of one night. Parenthood, he found, consumes you, if you let it and he was more than willing to do so.

Within a few days, Raphael became his entire world, he did everything he could to ensure the boy wouldn’t fall apart at the seams the way so many newborn vampires did. Magnus helped him reach the point where he could return to his childhood home and say goodbye to his loved ones. Then Magnus helped the boy come to terms with the loss of everything he’d ever known.

* * *

By the time Raphael fled the coop, Magnus had left behind any and all desire to seek out a life partner. He was content to govern the Warlocks of Brooklyn and to run his Nightclub. He didn’t need anything else.

Until he hears those words again.

* * *

“Are you a warlock?” The kid questions, giggling as Magnus magic tickles him, where it heals him, Magnus smiles at the kid, his heart stolen between one beat and the next.

“Yes, I am.” He replies, just resisting the urge to ruffle the kid’s hair, especially since he’s healing a head wound, when the kid gasps, his eyes going wide as he wriggles. “Sit still.”

“Those my words!” the kid exclaims, pressing his hand down over his heart and Magnus’ own heart stops for a second, before he laughs.

“You’ll hear them a hundred times in the next few years, little one. Don’t rely on them.” Magnus warns, pulling back when he feels the wound finally close. He hums and clears away the blood with a snap of his fingers. “Alright, run along and find your parents. I have to go ensure the Institute is still standing.”

“Okay! Thank you, Mr. Warlock!” the kid yells, before eagerly jumping to his feet and rushing away. Magnus watches after him, before rolling his eyes, shaking is head and heading off to ensure the Institute will survive whatever attack has befallen it. “Izzy, where are you?” he hears the little voice calling, as he turns away.

* * *

He watches a Shadowhunter rush past him in the middle of the party and he feels his heart stutter.

“Who are you?” he asks, without meaning to, before he pulls himself together again, he’s not going to be foolish enough to break his century long stint of being single, especially not for some Shadowhunter.

* * *

“Well done.” An unfamiliar, but beautiful voice calls from behind and he smiles.

“More like medium rare.” He replies, unable to help himself as he turns to look at his rescuer and finds that it is the beautiful Shadowhunter from the party. Perhaps, he thinks, just _perhaps,_ there won’t be any harm in playing the field.

* * *

“We’re soulmates!” Alec exclaims one day, a few months into their marriage, a few tense days after they’ve had a blow out fight over… something Magnus can’t even really remember anymore, but thinks was about Alec's mortality.

“What?”

“We’re soulmates or… I hope we are. You said my words.” Alec replies, shrugging his shoulders and Magnus just furrows his brow at him.

“What ‘more like medium rare?’” He asks, with a snort. “Alec-“

“No. You said ‘yes, I am.’” Alec argues and Magnus just shakes his head, feels the sting of a headache threatening to form.

“What?”

“The very first time we ever met, before anything with Clary. I asked if you were a warlock and you said ‘yes, I am.’ Those are my words.” Alec answers, Magnus’ shakes his head again, tries to understand what his husband is trying to tell him, before a memory flashes before his eyes. Of a little boy with his husband’s floofy hair, dark eyes, and that stupid smile that melts your heart in an instant.

“You…” he pauses, trails off, a smile pulling at his lips. “You were very cute, if very trusting.”

“I was _four!_ ” Alec argues, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting, causing Magnus to laugh.

“Right.” He murmurs, before rubbing at his face. “You said my words, too.”

“Soulmates.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He whispers, because he can’t do that again. Andromeda was… everything and she’s gone. But Alec is everything, now, too. Whether they’re soulmates or not, Magnus already knows it is going to destroy him when Alec dies. He might just be what finally, _mercifully,_ pushes him over that edge.

“Magnus-“

“I had a soulmate before you. Her name was Andromeda, and they were _our_ words. She’s gone, Alexander. Rotted away in the dirt and I’m _still here_. So, it means _nothing.”_ He swears, refuses to let Alec make this into something it isn’t. They love each other, deeply, truly, why does it have to mean anything else?

“Magnus, it means _everything_.” Alec exclaims, taking an abortive step forward, his hands raised as if in surrender, but they aren’t fighting anymore.

“What?”

“There is a rune held sacred and secret by Shadowhunters since the dawn of our creation. We talk of the parabatai bond creating a soul bond, but it pales in comparison to the true Soulmate rune.” Alec explains in a rush, like he’s excited and terrified all at the same time. “It binds two souls together, forever. Binds their life force, so if one is immortal, the other is immortal, if one dies, the other dies with them. Binds them so if one is ever reborn, the other is reborn, too. It’s like the Alliance rune, you can have it even if you aren’t a Shadowhunter. But it’s permanent, cannot be broken.”

“Oh.” Magnus murmurs suddenly feeling like all the air has been sucked out of the room as his legs collapse out beneath him.

“Magnus!” Alec yells, rushing forward to keep him from faceplanting the floor, Magnus leans into him, tries to bring his thoughts to some sort of order but the only thing rushing around and around in his mind is the thought of living and dying with Alec. Never being forced to go on again when his entire world has ended.

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” He mumbles, shakily bringing his hand up to cling at Alec’s wrist. “Forever.”

“Yeah.” Alec answers with a laugh, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. “We could have had it at our wedding if you’d just _told_ me.”

“I didn’t know… I didn’t know that kid was you.”

“Right.” Alec murmurs, before he pauses, making an unhappy face that Magnus leans forward to kiss away, getting a soft smile for his efforts. “You had a soulmate before? I didn’t know it was possible.”

“Our words are so vague, Alec. Andromeda and I never were certain.” He admits, before shaking his head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She is gone and you are here, and I’m with you… forever.”

“Yeah, forever. Come on, let’s get off the floor before someone finds us.” Alec grumbles, pulling them both up.

“Let’s go face forever.” Magnus says, getting a laugh in response. “I love you.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Realized after I wrote this that I didn't imply as heavily as I wanted ( or even really at all) Andromeda's soul is the same as Alec's soul. Just reborn with no memory of their past life. They really were soulmates. And Magnus has never had anyone else whose words match his own. The question was always asked slightly differently whenever he answered 'Yes, I am' and whenever the question was asked 'Are you a Warlock?' he always answered some other way 'Of course' 'what do you think?' 'What gave you that idea?' etc, it's only been Andromeda and Alec whose words matched his and his words matched theirs.


End file.
